Severest penalty urged in beheading case

Staff writer, with CNA

Sat, Jul 13, 2013 - Page 3

Prosecutors yesterday indicted a man from New Taipei City (新北市) on charge of decapitating his sister and asked the court to hand down “the most severe punishment.”

The homicide came to national attention when a pickled human head with a note attached was found in a toilet at a temple in Chiayi County’s Shueishang Township (水上) on March 15.

Although police suspected Chen Chia-fu (陳佳富), the brother of victim Chen Wan-ting (陳婉婷), had committed the crime, he has denied it.

Chen Chia-fu has been detained since March 18, and Chiayi Prosecutors’ Office Chief Prosecutor Chen Chao-ting (陳昭廷) yesterday said that an investigation by the office found that the 37-year-old had lived with his 36-year-old sister, Chen Wan-ting, in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重).

Although Chen Chia-fu had a stable job as a chef, he found his monthly salary of a little more than NT$30,000 was only sufficient to support himself, and thus felt his sister was a burden, the indictment said.

As Chen Chia-fu was getting married after the Lunar New Year holiday in 2010, he devised a plan to dispose of his sister, it said, adding that he was also in urgent need of money.

Having trained as an insurance agent, Chen Chia-fu is familiar with the insurance compensation process and took out several insurance polices for his sister so that after killing her he could cash them in, the indictment said.

After getting married to a Chinese woman surnamed Liu (劉) in China on May 28, Chen Chia-fu decided it was time to kill his sister prior to Liu moving to Taiwan near the end of last year, it said.

The indictment said that Chen Chia-fu strangled Chen Wan-ting to death in their apartment before cutting her body into pieces with a cooking knife.

Chen Chia-fu then processed his sister’s body with a meat grinder, diluted the ground body parts with water and disposed of them down the bathroom drain, it said, adding that he then disposed of the rest of the corpse before leaving the severed head in the temple in Chiayi County.

The chief prosecutor said that due to the cruelty of the crime, and Chen Chia-fu’s apparent lack of remorse, the prosecutors’ office believes he should be permanently separated from society and thus requested the most extreme penalty from the court.